College student so not a huge amount of income to spend on tris and looking to improve my bike split a lot without spending a lot. My bike split at Lubbock was 2:56 which met my goal of sub 3 hours but I have a lot of room for improvement considering I am capable of running a 1:17 half marathon. For my last bike split the training was 2-3 rides a week ranging from 15-40 miles in length and would include some interval sessions on the dumb trainer only off of perceived effort. Outside riding was tracked using my Garmin forerunner (no HR) so accuracy is also iffy. I ride a QR Caliente with stock wheels and no other upgrades.
Basically what is my best bet for training on the bike over the next year to improve that split and what kind of times could be reasonable to have as a goal for Chattanooga 70.3 in May. The one thing I know for sure is I will be doing longer rides of 2-4 hours routinely over the year. Besides that, I dont have the $400 to spend on a power meter right now, have plenty of access to hills (not much flat), a dumb trainer and if helpful I can spend some money on HR monitor or speed/cadence sensor to use TrainerRoad but I might not have those metrics for a race so I dont want to be dependent on them in training and then have the training go to waste. I've also heard that TrainerRoad with virtual power isnt super accurate so will it still be an effective tool to use for me still?
Basically what is my best bet for training on the bike over the next year to improve that split and what kind of times could be reasonable to have as a goal for Chattanooga 70.3 in May. The one thing I know for sure is I will be doing longer rides of 2-4 hours routinely over the year. Besides that, I dont have the $400 to spend on a power meter right now, have plenty of access to hills (not much flat), a dumb trainer and if helpful I can spend some money on HR monitor or speed/cadence sensor to use TrainerRoad but I might not have those metrics for a race so I dont want to be dependent on them in training and then have the training go to waste. I've also heard that TrainerRoad with virtual power isnt super accurate so will it still be an effective tool to use for me still?